Doctor Who Sock Monkey

28Dec

I have a friend who is a big Doctor Who fan. Her birthday was in December and I needed a birthday present. I was thinking about the sock monkeys I had made one day when the idea struck. I should make a Doctor Who sock monkey! Brilliant!

I don’t really know much about Doctor Who, science fiction really isn’t my thing. I’ve seen exactly one episode of the show and it was the Don’t Blink stone angels episode. From that episode I really didn’t feel the need to watch any more. I get the “timey wimey” references and the stone angel references. So here’s what I know about Doctor Who.

Doctor Who is some kind of time traveling alien

He travels through time in something called a TARDIS that looks like a police box

There are things called Daleks that look like overgrown salt shakers with plungers for arms and say “Exterminate!”

The police box is “bigger on the inside” and he has a sonic screwdriver

There have been 11 doctors and the show has been around for a really long time. One of the doctors had an extra long scarf. Another doctor was David Tennant who was in a movie called Casanova and it was kind of disturbing.

“Time is a … big ball of timey wimey stuff”

I think that about covers it, or rather covers what I know about Doctor Who. With all that in mind I set about trying to make a Doctor Who sock monkey. Here’s the sock monkey I made to start.

I had to do some research to see what Doctor Who looked like. It seemed to me that all of the doctors wear the same thing all the time so they have an iconic outfit that you can recognize them by. I didn’t know which Doctor Who was my friends favourite so I decided to just go with the current doctor. His outfit includes a beige suit jacket, a red bowtie and a red fez hat. That seemed simple enough.

I started with the bowtie.

I want you to know that this is actual bowtie, made of felt, not just some clip on. I wanted the “authentic” look for my Doctor Who sock monkey. I fought with the stupid tie. Bowties are complicated to tie! Finally I got it to look the way I wanted.

Then I made the jacket and the fez. Felt and hot glue are the name of the game in making these clothing items. The fez is attached to a safety pin so it can be repositioned if need be.

So there’s my Doctor Who sock monkey! Isn’t he cute? Now because I don’t know much about Doctor Who I didn’t know if the sock monkey would be immediately recognizable as being Doctor Who. So I wanted to include some other elements, like the TARDIS and the Dalek. At first I thought I would make more clothing-like things to put on the sock monkey. Like a Dalek or TARDIS dress or something. Then I thought…No. I don’t know how to do that. That sounds like too much work. So instead I decided to make a sandwich board.

On one side you have the Dalek

And on the other, you have the TARDIS

I decided that sock monkey Doctor Who liked to play dress up and he liked to go as a Dalek or TARDIS for Halloween or something so this is what he would wear. Again I had to look up what the things looked like. Then I drew them out on some white Bristol board, cut them out and attached the two cut outs with string that could go over the monkey’s head.

For all my other sock monkeys I made a mouth out of embroidery floss. But for Doctor Who I kind of liked the minimalist look he had without a mouth so I left it.

And because I think the sock monkey is cute, here’s one last picture.

So how did I do? Did I capture the true essence of Doctor Who? Doesn’t really matter though, in my opinion, because in the end I have a super cute sock monkey.